Friday, September 09, 2011

But Some Are More Rightful Than Others

One of the fundamental causes of our present difficulty, as everyone knows, is the European Court of Human Rights. The idea that poor people and rich people, expenses claimants and asylum seekers, tenants and landlords, Muslims and Anglicans and atheists are all in some way fundamentally entitled to things has perverted the course of economic justice more even than bad weather, feral underclasses or the existence of the National Health Service. Accordingly, the Government has ordered some of its little men to work out how ministers can conveniently decide which bits of the law they would like to obey while treating the rest with due ignorification. Of course, this is mostly what ministers do in any case, but it seems that Daveybloke and his chums would like to formalise the relationship. However, there may be trouble ahead. The little man in charge of the commission for Daveybloke's Bill of Conditionally Qualified Rights for Nice People has already warned of troublemakers who argue that the rule of law might be seen as ever so slightly inconsistent with allowing ministers to override it, and implies that the problems with the proposal are such that the Government may not be able to adopt it immediately even though it has not yet been fully considered.